[gaius]

You do recognize how terribly inefficient that is, right? In this day and age its all about scale.

Is it, tho'? It is well known that IT doesn't improve productivity[1]; all the benefits of automation get swallowed up in the extra people needed to support and maintain it. So we can assume that the ratio of bank employees to bank customers has remained constant over time. So actually there's no reason for bank's not to operate the old personal-relationship model; they would need to employ the same number of staff to do it, just locate them in branches rather than at head office.

[1] http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/McKinsey-Why-IT-does-n...